Opposition to River Shannon extraction plans 'growing' says expert

Emma Kennedy, the author of the Kennedy report, believes opposition to the plan to pump the River Shannon is growing

OPPOSITION is 'growing' to plans to extract water from the River Shannon and pump it to Dublin, according to the author of a highly-critical report into Irish Water’s proposals for the project.

Emma Kennedy, the author of the Kennedy Analysis, believes that there is a growing consensus that Irish Water’s proposals are ‘baseless.’

Irish Water plans to build a pipeline from the Parteen basin to Peamount in West Dublin, with the aim of supplying water to the capital and the midlands on a daily basis.

It is estimated that 300 million litres of water will be pumped 172 km daily to Dublin from the River Shannon should this plan go ahead.

However, Ms Kennedy, who carried out a forensic analysis of the overall project, believes that Irish Water has made errors in their calculations.

“Many of Dublin’s pipes were laid in the 1800s. Yet Irish Water proposes to replace just 1% of the pipes per year.”

“With this 1% target some pipes will not be touched for another 100 years. This damns Dubliners to decades of outages, no matter how much extra water is brought in.”

Ms Kennedy has now called on Irish Water to debate the rationale behind the proposal.

“Irish Water states that fixing Dublin’s pipes would cost €3 to €4 billion.”

“Instead, Irish Water plans to spend €1.3billion to pump yet more water almost 200km across the country into pipes that already lose 57% of the water put into them.”

“On today’s leakage, that is like taking 2 million bathtubs of Shannon water every single day and pouring every drop directly into the ground under Dublin’s streets and that is not raw water, it is water that would already have been treated, which is a costly exercise.”

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